Open Access Week is an international event that raises awareness of the many benefits of making research free and open for others to use. This year’s theme is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge,” which asks libraries and researchers around the world to consider how they will create and support platforms for sharing knowledge that are “inclusive, equitable, and truly serve the needs of a diverse global community. Asking ourselves and our partners ‘open for whom?’ will help ensure that considerations of equity become and remain central… .”

At Middlebury, we are considering “open for whom?” through two goals for the upcoming year: expanding our efforts to support campus-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; as well as identifying our role in building and sustaining the infrastructure required for digital scholarship.

Other open access efforts at Middlebury include:

• Digital Collections at Middlebury, our open-source repository that houses digitized works from our archives, along with student theses, scientific datasets, and faculty open access articles.
• The Open Access policy, adopted by faculty in 2016, grants the college a license to republish scholarly essays by faculty in our online repository.
• Lever Press, a consortial open access publisher focusing on “digital-first” online scholarly monographs. 
• An examination of digital scholarship infrastructure, supported by a Mellon grant and led by Dean of the Library Mike Roy (along with a multi-school team of library professionals), with the goal of envisioning a more modern and sustainable system that would enhance scholarly communication at colleges, universities, and research libraries. 

Finally, are you wondering where to find open access research? Here are a few places to look:

• Open Access on Project MUSE
• Open Content on JSTOR
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• LibrarySearch, Middlebury’s new discovery service (the replacement for Summon). Find Open Access materials by going to “Search Options” then “Collection” and finally “Open Access Scholarship.” LibrarySearch is still a new service and a work-in-progress, so please get in touch with a librarian with any questions!

The Library has hundreds of databases, indexes and catalogs, providing access to millions of articles, books, films, musical recordings and primary sources.  That sounds promising… until it sounds overwhelming. Where should you start your research? We used to recommend Summon, but over the summer, we replaced Summon with LibrarySearch.  

Like its predecessor Summon, LibrarySearch is a great place to begin your research.  That’s because LibrarySearch links you to nearly everything in our collections. And, we think LibrarySearch is even better than Summon at matching results to your search terms.

We’re still straightening out some of the kinks with our new discovery service.  For example, LibrarySearch is linking to materials at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and it is not linking to many of our online newspapers. So as always, please get in touch with a librarian if you’re not finding what you need.

Next time you’re starting a research project, try LibrarySearch! Look for it at the center of the Library home page, or at go.middlebury.edu/librarysearch.